Monday, April 27, 2020 | 3:08 p.m.
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The American Lung Association is responding to the COVID-19 lung health crisis every day through our research, advocacy and education programs. We are doing our best to ensure that our resources and support are available to everyone, and especially those living with lung diseases that make them more vulnerable.
The American Lung Association is also maintaining our ongoing focus on ensuring that all Americans have clean, healthy air so that lungs are not compromised by pollution today, or when traffic and other major pollution sources return to more normal – and unhealthy — levels.
Last week, the American Lung Association released its 21st annual State of the Air report highlighting local levels of two of the most widespread outdoor air pollutants impacting lung health: ozone pollution, also known as summertime smog, and particle pollution, also called soot.
Ozone pollution and particle pollution are two of the most widespread and dangerous air pollutants. Breathing these pollutants can cause asthma attacks, respiratory and cardiovascular harm, and even early death. Breathing particle pollution can also cause lung cancer, and Harvard researchers recently linked long-term elevated particle levels with greater death rates associated with COVID-19.
We found that nearly half of all Americans live in counties that had unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. More striking is that we found more evidence of the impacts of climate change making the job of cleaning the air much more difficult.
Both Las Vegas and Reno appear on the lists of the most polluted cities in the United States. Las Vegas ranked as the ninth most polluted city for unhealthy ozone days, while also ranking as the 25th most polluted by unhealthy particle days. Reno ranked 23rd for unhealthy particle pollution days in this year’s report.
For both cities, unhealthy air days crept up compared to last year’s report. We see this across the West, with record temperatures, drought and historic wildfires interfering with decades of progress in cutting ozone and particle days.
Simply put, climate change is adding to the challenge of cleaning our air.
Protecting and improving public health demands strong actions to simultaneously clean our air and confront climate change impacts. Climate change amplifies the conditions for unhealthy air, heat stress and a wide range of respiratory, cardiovascular and other health risks already present in Nevada.
Every day of unhealthy air poses a risk for our most vulnerable residents, including the 36,000 kids and 137,000 adults living with asthma in Clark County, or the hundreds of thousands of seniors, children, lower income residents and communities of color who can face disproportionate burdens due to unhealthy air.
As seen in the state’s first greenhouse gas emissions inventory published in January, the transportation and power sectors are by far the largest sources of climate pollution in Nevada – and need immediate attention.
We applauded last November when Gov. Steve Sisolak issued his climate change executive order to push for a healthier future, and we know we have to make that vision a reality.
This year, we’ll need to see a strong state climate strategy that ensures progress in cleaning up our transportation, power and other sectors. Rapidly moving away from burning fossil fuels will clean our air and support achieving our state’s climate goals.
Accelerating the widespread transition to zero emission transportation, powered by local clean energy, is critical to meeting the state’s carbon pollution reduction benchmarks and ensuring we don’t lose decades of momentum in cleaning our air.
This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Clean Air Act and science-based programs that have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Still, we have a long way to go.
The American Lung Association in Nevada calls on the Environmental Protection Agency to set stronger limits on ozone and particle pollution to safeguard health. We also look forward to working with our local and state clean air agencies to achieve this goal for all Nevadans.
Now more than ever, we know the importance of clean air and healthy lungs.
Shannon Proctor is the executive director of the American Lung Association in Nevada.
